When Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100 recently, leading politicians of both parties praised him effusively. Kissinger was national security adviser and then secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford but offered advice to every administration ever since.
Julian Borger of The Guardian reported, “One of the very few things that still brings the Republican and Democratic political establishments together is their shared reverence for Henry Kissinger.” This has angered many progressives who consider Kissinger to have been a ruthless war criminal.
Joe Biden, who had praised Kissinger when he was a senator, was cautious this time: “Throughout our careers, we often disagreed. And often strongly. But from that first briefing, his fierce intellect and profound strategic focus was evident.”
Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, speculated about the widespread reverence: “Some Democrats and some liberals have a lack of confidence on foreign affairs, and there’s this aura of credibility around Kissinger,” adding that many Democrats can feel defensive about being considered unrealistic idealists.
Rhodes’ former boss, Obama, was an exception. In an interview with The Atlantic in 2016, Obama criticized Nixon and Kissinger’s legacy in southeast Asia: “We dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II, and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell.”
The Paris peace deal that Kissinger helped negotiate in 1973 was similar to what was offered in 1968 before Nixon became president. Nixon prolonged the war at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives as well as untold numbers of southeast Asians.
Historian Jeffrey Kimball, in his book The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy, delved into numerous declassified files to conclude that Kissinger’s record “is one of persisting in a deadlocked war for the sake of appearances — i.e. salvaging an elusive and false U.S. credibility.”
The National Security Archive (NSA) recently published a very lengthy “Declassified Obituary” of Kissinger. The NSA is a research and archival institution located at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and is the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government and the leading nonprofit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It was founded in 1985 by journalists and historians challenging excessive national security secrecy.
The documents deal with Kissinger’s involvement in illegal bombing in Laos and Cambodia and complicity in genocide in East Timor and Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands killed.
Let’s just focus on Kissinger’s role in the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Just days after Allende was elected in 1970, Kissinger called the CIA director to discuss how to undermine the new government. Kissinger would become the chief architect of the policy to destabilize the new government.
Kissinger told Nixon that they couldn’t deny that Allende was legitimately elected. This was unlike Fidel Castro in Cuba who came to power via a violent insurrection. The election had “an insidious model effect” that could inspire people around the globe.
Kissinger said,“The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”
When Allende was overthrown by a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, Kissinger ignored State Department aides who were concerned about hundreds of Chileans being killed and sent a warm secret message of support to Pinochet. The U.S. helped Pinochet with economic and military aid and diplomatic support; the CIA created a secret police agency.
When Nixon bitched about the “liberal crap” in the media about Allende’s overthrow, Kissinger said, “In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes.” Yes, the CIA overthrew democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s.
These days, the Trumpist foot soldiers of the Jan. 6 insurrection like the Proud Boys wear T-shirts saying “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong.” They are MAGA’s persecuted heroes.
Pinochet and his crimes are celebrated by the far right. This is domestic blowback, an unintended consequence of America’s foreign dirty deeds — and part of Kissinger’s legacy.
This opinion does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.
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